This ICO is at the top of my list right now. What do I look for in an ICO release? Most important is what problem is the coin trying to solve? If successful, can it disrupt a major industry (for good), and how easy will the implementation be? Finally, does it pass the smell test, and who are the founders/devs?

This one passes all the tests. First off, having Brendan Eich as your founder, and putting his name on the product is an immediate bonus. For anyone who has to deal with online ads from a business perspective I'm sure you're familiar with the headache, and for users of the internet (everybody) you already know how frustrating online ads are - especially on mobile devices. User adaption here is easy. Download a browser - done! Even if you don't want to view ads and just keep everything blocked, it is still helping with mass adoption.

Chris Coney from the Cryptoverse was where I first heard of BAT. I went back through his videos and he actually has highlighted it already 3 times. I respect his opinion, and will definitely be on board with this ICO.

Here are his 3 videos that relate to BAT starting with the oldest one first:

Start at 7:30 to skip right to Brave browser info:

Here is Chris interviewing Brendan Eich:

Start at 9:03 to only listen to the BAT highlight:

Last edited by SilverDoge on Sun May 21, 2017, edited 1 time in total.

This is very interesting. The concept of paying people to be exposed to ads is intriguing. They can still mentally tune out the ads, as they did before browsers got ad-blocking extensions. The trick will be persuading millions of people to use the Brave browser instead of their old ad-blocking favorites.

As far as the BAT coin, it's not clear how to buy in, but they will make that announcement before the 31st. It seems they want to be paid in ETH, though, since that is the foundation of the thing.

Long John wrote:The trick will be persuading millions of people to use the Brave browser instead of their old ad-blocking favorites.

This is the key.

And a couple of big selling points according to the White Paper and some of the vids will be that using Brave on mobile saves both battery power and data (for anyone not on an unlimited data plan). And whether on mobile or computer, the surfing itself will be faster due to all the scripts that are NOT running in the background. This is better than dealing with ad-blocking which probably requires more computing power than just letting the ads run.

And of course, the ability to make some sort of money just for viewing ads, is in and of itself a game changer that will convert many. I've changed from Netscape, to Internet Explorer, to Google Chrome. And how many people are sick of Google anyway? Just having an excuse to move to another web browser will be good enough for many - as long as the product is just as good.

This is a comedy YT vid, but it's funny because it's scary true. With the Brave browser, while each person will have a targeted profile based on their likes/dislikes, search history, and numerous other factors - this information will be known yet private. You will be authenticated yet anonymous. Meaning that each person isn't identified by name, but simply by a marketing profile. A much better business model.

Just because you agree to be paid for having ads appear in your Brave browser doesn't mean you have to pay them any attention, much less CLICK on them. Maybe that will be the next stage: get paid even more if you click on the ad and go to the seller's website.

Now, suppose a smart person sets up a secondary puter and scripts a Brave browser to go to thousands of websites every day, ads pop up on each one, he gets paid for them, and he's only looking at the puter once a day to make sure it hasn't crashed, not viewing any ads at all. Add in the potential pay-for-clicks feature, and he scripts the browser to click every single ad that pops up (or every 10th one, if that is just too much for the browser to handle).

Maybe the ad-chasing puter is also staking or mining, to maximize its usefulness.

But no doubt the Brave developers have thought of this scheme and will somehow prevent it. I assume the paying advertisers have thought of it.

I'm not seeing a lot of difference between their Android browser and Chrome. It is, in some instances, faster than Chrome, but I don't think there is enough of a difference to cause most people to change.

Long John wrote:Just because you agree to be paid for having ads appear in your Brave browser doesn't mean you have to pay them any attention, much less CLICK on them. Maybe that will be the next stage: get paid even more if you click on the ad and go to the seller's website.

Now, suppose a smart person sets up a secondary puter and scripts a Brave browser to go to thousands of websites every day, ads pop up on each one, he gets paid for them, and he's only looking at the puter once a day to make sure it hasn't crashed, not viewing any ads at all. Add in the potential pay-for-clicks feature, and he scripts the browser to click every single ad that pops up (or every 10th one, if that is just too much for the browser to handle).

Maybe the ad-chasing puter is also staking or mining, to maximize its usefulness.

But no doubt the Brave developers have thought of this scheme and will somehow prevent it. I assume the paying advertisers have thought of it.

This might be a concern if you didn't have the founder of Java creating this web browser and BAT token. If he can't figure out this most obvious problem then I doubt he would even start the project.

I just downloaded the Brave browser on my computer and mobile. Transferred my favorites from Chrome in under a minute, and have now blocked all ads, scripts, bots etc. It has been quite a smooth experience so far. You can still access gmail, google maps, etc if you want.

Bucketeer wrote:I'm not seeing a lot of difference between their Android browser and Chrome. It is, in some instances, faster than Chrome, but I don't think there is enough of a difference to cause most people to change.

But this misses the point. The browser isn't supposed to look much different. That isn't why people are going to switch.

I can turn off all ads by default. I can save battery power. I can browse faster. I can remain anonymous while still allowing marketers to build an accurate profile to advertise to me (if I so choose to allow them). This is game changing, and that is even before I have the ability to make any money by allowing ads.

This isn't going to change the way online ads are implemented overnight, in the same way that bitcoin wasn't an overnight success. But if this business model does see success, and advertisers need to acquire BATs to advertise on Brave, it sure would be nice to have some.

Again, I'm interested in coins long term that have the ability to disrupt an industry and this is one of them.

Bucketeer wrote:I'm not seeing a lot of difference between their Android browser and Chrome. It is, in some instances, faster than Chrome, but I don't think there is enough of a difference to cause most people to change.

But this misses the point. The browser isn't supposed to look much different. That isn't why people are going to switch.

I can turn off all ads by default. I can save battery power. I can browse faster. I can remain anonymous while still allowing marketers to build an accurate profile to advertise to me (if I so choose to allow them). This is game changing, and that is even before I have the ability to make any money by allowing ads.

This isn't going to change the way online ads are implemented overnight, in the same way that bitcoin wasn't an overnight success. But if this business model does see success, and advertisers need to acquire BATs to advertise on Brave, it sure would be nice to have some.

Again, I'm interested in coins long term that have the ability to disrupt an industry and this is one of them.

I'm not seeing enough of a difference for the typical cellphone user to switch from the browser that comes pre-loaded on their phone. If you're male and 40 years old, you aren't typical.

Bucketeer wrote:I'm not seeing a lot of difference between their Android browser and Chrome. It is, in some instances, faster than Chrome, but I don't think there is enough of a difference to cause most people to change.

But this misses the point. The browser isn't supposed to look much different. That isn't why people are going to switch.

I can turn off all ads by default. I can save battery power. I can browse faster. I can remain anonymous while still allowing marketers to build an accurate profile to advertise to me (if I so choose to allow them). This is game changing, and that is even before I have the ability to make any money by allowing ads.

This isn't going to change the way online ads are implemented overnight, in the same way that bitcoin wasn't an overnight success. But if this business model does see success, and advertisers need to acquire BATs to advertise on Brave, it sure would be nice to have some.

Again, I'm interested in coins long term that have the ability to disrupt an industry and this is one of them.

I'm not seeing enough of a difference for the typical cellphone user to switch from the browser that comes pre-loaded on their phone. If you're male and 40 years old, you aren't typical.

I'm not too worried about this. A typical 40 year old male who is employed with a family and working full time, is usually the LAST to adopt new technologies, even though they are to his benefit. Adoption of superior tech, occurs at the margins of society, and slowly grows from there. And what percent of the global market do you need to have overwhelming success? Maybe 2% tops. The upside is unlimited though.

The other nice thing about Brave/BAT is this is a perfect on-board ramp to introduce people to crypto currency that are brand new to it. If I were to go on the street and try to sell someone on bitcoin or ethereum, the day-to-day use case isn't smack in front of them. They can't yet go into McDonalds or JC Penny's and spend their bitcoin or ethereum. Now they could spend it online, but that is slightly more abstract. Now imagine, I told them they can switch to the Brave browser, keep all ads OFF, or decide to allow some targeted ads, maintain their privacy, and get PAID a small percentage to view ads. That will peak the interest of many. But how do you get paid? In BATS. That is a crypto currency.... one can exchange it for fiat if desired, or trade it for other crypto.... and all of a sudden you have a new convert to crypto.

You see, this is not only a win-win for users and advertisers, it is a win for on-boarding people to the world of crypto. We should all want to see this project succeed.